Otaku -no- Yen

Well, now that we have a website up again, and one that hopefully will not disappear thanks to multiple issues, hackers, or lame stuff, there’s been a lot going on.

A LOT going on…

Where to start.

I guess we can begin with the site issues. We’ve wanted to move over to a wordpress related site for ages now, and just hadn’t been able to make it happen.  After the crazy hack in October the weekend of Fusion, we decided that trying to race to get a broken site with broken coding back up and running was just not worth the time or money it would cost.  So we said eff it, and opted to reach out to Kat.  Kat has been very patient with us. See, here’s the shitty part; I suck at putting together websites.  It’s true.  I run a webcomic and the studio is launching 2 more, and until we found a site format that worked simply, nothing was going to happen.  I’ve hated all this time without updates, but god the things that have been going on… I’ll continue in a second.  Anyway, we took time to work with Kat, and she designed this spiffy site, which we are totally geeked about.  This format is pretty standard and all of our projects from this point forward will probably hold the same format and design, just with different colors, ad spaces, and graphics.   I like this. It’s clean, it’s neat, you can find stuff, and it shows the latest comic so you can see when it’s updated.  We dig it.  What’re your thoughts?

Now on the other side, we’ve been busting our asses working. Don’t think we took tons of time off.  No, we were working our butts off the whole time the site was down and not moving.   Whip Angels volume 1 is in production, as is Dirty Rice.  Seriously we have been up to our balls in projects trying to get things moving.

OnY is going to finish later this year.  I’m not going to lie, I’ve put it on a TEMPORARY back burner. Why? Because Whip Angels and Dirty Rice have been garnering far more attention than OnY.  I’ll be honest with everyone; I love Otaku -no- Yen, but I’m ready for that chapter to close.  Richard and I have been working so, so hard at Whip Angels.  The pre-planning has been happening for months. Literally.  We’ve spent hours detailing character profiles and designs, writing story and concepts together, creating the environments that the characters are in and formulating an ending.  Yes.  WE HAVE AN ENDING BEFORE WE EVEN STARTED.  I know, what a concept, right?  Dirty Rice has also been a huge part of our expansion, and it has taken a very long time to get things moving.

We may process all of OnY at once and post it in one fell swoop, or we may finish it in advance and then release 2 pages a week until it is done.  Regardless, by August of this year, Otaku -no- Yen will be over.  We’ve got talks of revisiting old stories again, such as the original Gaijin-Con stand alone story that we used to promote the comic, and selling it in a professional format.  It’d actually be fun to pick it back up, do it with artwork 10 years later, and do it in full color.  We’ll also be planning to sell E-books of OnY’s individual story arcs.  IF, and ONLY if, we get enough interest, we may start another kickstarter to print them in graphic novel format.  But that remains to be determined.

I don’t want you guys to think that we are going to just drop it and never finish this story. We will.  I promise you guys that. And it will be this year.  But we have so many amazing stories to tell, and right now, our stories need to go somewhere fresh.

It’s tough being an independent comicker.  It really is.  Rich and I both work several jobs just to afford to be able to do this.  And we love it.  But it IS a labor of love.  We look forward to sharing that with you guys this year, and letting you see a whole new side of us, of the studio, of the way we can expand and branch out to reach a larger audience.

Join us as we take the plunge.

-Shannon

I kind of wanted to make this post on Sunday, but Sunday was a tough day to come to grips with, and I needed some time to myself to think and not make a drama-llama out of myself.  I’m good enough at that without the added bonus of art emo bullshit hitting me hard.

Like most creative types I know, I tend to get a little over emotional at times.  I take things personally every once in a while, I criticize myself harder than any critic ever has, and to be honest I work hard not to let that side of me show after the trolling episode of a few years ago.  But I just want to say one thing to  you guys.

Thank you.

You may have noticed that our Kickstarter for Book 2 has not reached it’s goal.  This means that the project failed to be funded, and we will not receive any of the donated money.  Your donations will not be taken and Kickstarter will not process them.  Therefore, sad to say, book 2 will not be printed.  I know that a few of you will be dissapointed by this but your donations were severely appreciated, even if we didn’t make our goal.  This kickstarter project, like EVERYTHING else we’ve done with OnY, was a learning exercise.  We’ve learned so much the hard way over the years.  Like what, you may ask?  A ton.  I could point it all out but it would take forever.

But the toughest lesson I’ve pulled from all of this has been a personal one, and that is perhaps that OnY has just run it’s course.  It has been hard looking in this little virtual mirror and seeing that perhaps our reader base isn’t what it was. But we are going to admit it.  It’s hard admitting that my art style has shifted and needs to go back to a more cartoonish fun style, but I am going to admit it head on.  It’s hard to admit that everything from my layouts to the editing have been rough at best.  But I’m going to admit it.  OnY has been a labor of love, and love it we do, even with all of it’s flaws and foibles.  But perhaps, and this was the hardest lesson of all…perhaps it’s time to let it just drift quietly into the sunset and end it our way.

Fanboy is half over, and if we stick with a nice consistant schedule, it will be done by summer at the very latest.  We have every intention of completing the comic.  We have every intention of leaving the archives online once the new studio and Whip Angels sites are designed and posted.  And we have EVERY intention of always acknowledging that this was our first project, our hardest project…but our most beloved project.

When Whip Angels hits next spring, we’ve got some stuff in place to ensure a more consistant style, layout, and RELEASE. I’ll post more about that once I finish the final character designs and get the promo graphics ready, which should be in the next month.

Long story short, we want you guys to know that we have learned from our mistakes, and we plan to take those hard learned lessons in to the future with us on new projects, so that we can not only be better, stronger creators, but we can make YOU guys happy and as excited about future moves as we are.

To all of our readers and those of you who donated, I say thank you.  We couldn’t do any of this without your support, and we look forward to bringing you different, fun, exciting contnt in the future.  Grow with us.

-Shannon Townsend